Yearly eMpTyV Index

1994, 1996, 1998 -> 2002

Meet the Critics

Check out Andrew's music video blog!

What's Going On Here?

From 1999 -> 2001, a fellow named Andrew Hicks, along with henchmen James Wallace and Leon Bracey, published a website named eMpTyV containing reviews of music videos. It may sound like an odd concept but I, for one, am infatuated with music videos. The original text on the site's frontpage went like this:
We believe the music video as an art form is in danger of extinction. There's only so much you can do to dress up a four-minute pop song without it looking like every other quickly-edited band promo. A good video is distinctive, like a fine wine, or at least a middle-shelf vodka, and no matter how many lameass videos overshadow them, there are still good videos released every month. We sort through the flotsam and jetsam and find them and -- we'll warn you up-front -- our reviews are rude, vulgar, and politically incorrect. They are our opinions laid bare. As yet, there is no standard for music video criticism. No one else does it, after all. But we want to set the standard, through our own jaded humor and observations, this week and every other. And we want you to take the ride with us.

Andrew Hicks & James Wallace

All content copyright Andrew Hicks & James Wallace

Sometime ago, Andrew seemed to drop off the face of the internet, along with the site. To avoid losing this, umm, literary treasure, I decided to restore a local copy I still kept around. Right now, I just have many of the original pages mirrored. I have also patched up all the navigation links and made some other fixes. I think there may be a few more pages beyond October 23, 2001. So if, by some strange twist of fate, you actually have them (and they are not at The Wayback Machine, I checked) I would like to archive them here.

Recent Changes

September 25, 2005
Added over 200 more screenshots around the archive site.

September 21, 2005
Andrew sent me backup copies of the top 40 videos of 1996. Check the 1996 index for links to those pages. Further, he sent me never-before-published reviews that should have been published on March 2, 2002. Also, the reviews for July 28, 2000 have been recovered.

August 29, 2005:
Andrew lives! Andrew is still on the internet and has even started a new music video review blog at http://videoreviews.blogspot.com/.

August 28, 2005:

August 5, 2005: I dug a little deeper into the The Wayback Machine and found the entries for March 10/17/24, 1999. Further, I found the pages that apparently kicked off the whole eMpTyV site-- reviews of the top 80 MTV videos of 1998.

August 4, 2005: Started adding select screenshots for certain videos. First new screenshots appear on October 16, 2001 entry.

Mirrored by Mike Melanson (mike -at- multimedia.cx)